Eindhoven

SMART CITY STRATEGY

Elected as “Smartest Region in the world” and one of the 7 best global cities for startups, Eindhoven is now internationally recognized as a global hotbed for (social) innovation. Eindhoven is aiming to create a ‘smart society’: citizens are key to addressing problems and central to solving them. This means that they give direction to the drive for innovation, and this, in turn, makes us human-driven, supported by technology and design. These are the two areas in which the Eindhoven region excels. The vision of a truly smart society is realized by the Smart Society Programme that is adopted by the city council. All Smart Society initiatives and projects are placed in one of five programme lines, which are: data, infrastructure, living labs, community & ecosystem, and community.

We have a clear vision of how a Smart Society can work. We start by collecting social issues, from the bottom up. Involved citizens indicate their frustrations, worries or dreams. We then bring these social issues to the attention of potential partners, experts and designers from companies, government and knowledge institutions. They then join the citizens in deepening their understanding of the problems.

“The next step is to co-create conceptual solutions to these problems and test them in a real situation (living lab). From there this quadruple helix works towards a product with a solid business case which, if successful, can be exported. In this context, ‘successful’ means that the product solves the social problems identified at the beginning of the process.

CITY CHALLENGES

Mobility

Our long­term focus is a city in which through­traffic is diverted to the Ring road and the outskirts of the city and in which residents are encouraged to move around on foot, by bike or with public transport and with the city centre being vehicle restricted. Through doing this, we can ensure better traffic flow and add a strong impulse to the quality of the city centre which we wish to keep accessible for local traffic. We will invest in measures to further direct long-distance traffic away from the city centre to the Ring road and further away. Safeguarding air quality that falls below EU norms is a must.

Sustainability and climate

In the coming period, we will be focusing on sustainable energy, mobility, and energy­saving. We aim to explicitly link sustainability to economic activity and employment in our city and region. There is a substantial task before us, in disconnecting all homes and commercial premises from natural gas before 2050. Lastly, green is important in the city, which is why we will be reinforcing the policy of making our city greener and stimulating biodiversity.

Safety

We aim to reduce the crime rate and wish to increase the feeling of a safe environment.

We will be concentrating on crime prevention, and on combatting public incidents and disturbances. We will prevent what we can. Prevention is our premise and we will tackle problems by responding to them promptly. We intervene when it’s necessary. An important starting point is that we will work in an information­driven way. We will run pilot programmes at the district level and organize regular consultations between the Police and neighborhood residents,

who know best what is happening in their own neighborhood.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF IOT SOLUTIONS TO SOLVE THE CITY CHALLENGES

To enable our vision of the smart society, we collect and analyse data on mobility, environment, energy and public safety. This can improve city management and service, and opens up the potential for interested parties to build innovative solutions for societal challenges, based on data.

Eindhoven has an Open Data Platform that provides datasets of the city, but also several public organizations. This will increase transparency of policy and enable the community make their own contribution.

The Eindhoven smart light grid connects lighting poles in five districts throughout the city. Run as an innovative partnership, we can use this grid as a connectivity layer and sensor platform for to provide additional services for citizens, and enable them to improve safety and security by varying lighting conditions in a personalised manner.

Eindhoven is in the process of connecting all traffic light controllers in the city to the city-wide fiber-optic network, providing a low latency high-speed platform for mobility solutions and sensors, for instance by improving traffic flow, analyzing traffic patterns and prioritizing vulnerable groups.

Finally, sound and air quality sensor networks are operational and measure real-time meteorological parameters, air pollutants, and noise. As this data is open to third parties, innovative solutions to minimize impact can be developed by everyone.

RELEVANCE FOR THE CITIZENS

New technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (A.I.), Machine Learning and blockchain will play a crucial role in tomorrow’s smart society. They create a multitude of opportunities for improving quality of life in our city, by giving us the tools to improve the sustainability, economic climate, social inclusion, use of public space, mobility and security. However, we must also be aware of potential pitfalls, for instance with regards to privacy and transparency of the solutions we provide to the public.

SynchroniCity opens up our infrastructure for real-life, large-scale pilots, where new solutions such as improved bicycle mobility can be thoroughly evaluated within our smart ecosystem that includes our citizens. For businesses, the project offers the opportunity to take part in the open calls and deploy innovations that are scalable to EU or even world-wide communities.

Goal: the public lighting in the city will be connected to 1 smart light grid with applications that will improve the quality of life. Also a target of energy reduction. Starting with 5 districts in Eindhoven.

Stratumseind 2.0 Living Lab:

Stratumseind is one of Eindhoven’s most prominent nightlife areas, attracting well over 20,000 visitors in weekend nights. In contrast, it is almost deserted during the day. As the area is in decline and the number of (severe) incidents on the rise, the city aims to turn Stratumseind’s back into a safe environment. As part of the action plan, innovative solutions involving lighting, social media, gaming technology, and the collection and processing of sensor data are tested and deployed, in order to determine the effects of measures and to study which factors contribute to violence and discomfort.

Triangulum H2020 Project:

The three point project Triangulum is an European Smart Cities and Communities Lighthouse Projects, set to demonstrate, disseminate and replicate solutions and frameworks for Europe’s future smart cites. The Lighthouse Cities Manchester (UK), Eindhoven (NL) and Stavanger (NO) serve as testbeds for innovative projects focusing on sustainable mobility, energy, ICT and business opportunities.

AiREAS Innovative Air Measurement System:

AiREAS stands for a clean city. Citizens, companies, scientific institutes and the government are working together within AiREAS to achieve this. To begin with, they have developed the Innovative Air Measurement System (ILM). Eindhoven is the first place to do so: since autumn 2013 there have been 30+ boxes measuring various types of fine dust, ultrafine dust and ozone. These are all substances that can cause damage to health. All data from the ILM is publicly available free of charge.